DAYTONA BEACH — A Volusia County Circuit Court judge decided not to penalize Halifax Health during a hearing Wednesday for failing to produce documents prior to a deposition in the long-running legal fight over a hospital under construction in Deltona.
The public hospital system was sued by former Ponce Inlet mayor Nancy Epps who alleged that Halifax Health overstepped its authority when it moved to build a hospital outside its special taxing district.
Volusia County is divided into three such districts — one to oversee health care needs in different corners of the county. Although it operates several facilities outside the Halifax Hospital District, the 95-bed hospital in Deltona counts as the most significant move by Halifax Health into a neighboring community.
Epps asked the court in the June 2016 lawsuit to determine if Halifax Health’s move into West Volusia was illegal. Since the suit was filed, the case has moved at a snail's pace, often marked by contentious disagreements over documents and depositions.
The hearing Wednesday was no different.
Epps’ lawyers argued in a written motion that Halifax Health turned over nearly 250 pages of correspondence with Kaufman Hall, a company that consulted on the Deltona project, several months after they were requested.
They asked Judge Michael Orfinger to hold Halifax Health in contempt and order the hospital to pay attorneys fees for the time it took to bring the issue to court and reopen a deposition with Halifax’s strategic planning director Bill Griffin. Court records show Griffin took a deposition in March 2017.
“These are documents we have been seeking out for over a year since this case started when we initially served our first request for production back in June 2016,” Christopher Smith, an attorney representing Epps said during the hearing.
“These are documents that we feel are material to our case, that have hamstrung us in being able to properly and fully take discovery of Halifax's employees — in this case Halifax’s director of strategy Bill Griffin.”
Griffin spearheads most of the hospital's real estate investments, including land sales, purchases and development.
Amy Taylor Petrick, one of Halifax’s lawyers, said the hospital never objected to another deposition and that the issue could have been resolved with a phone call.
“The idea of opening Bill Griffin's deposition to talk about new documents is not an objectionable one but quite frankly all of this is not relevant to the material issues of this case,” Petrick said.
“The hospital has spent over half a million dollars on this case — most of which has been (for) this: discovery.”
In deciding not to penalize Halifax Health, Orfinger said it was not possible to determine that the hospital lied when it certified that documents sent earlier were complete.
“Their response, even though it was verified, may have been incorrect. But for me to hold them in contempt you would have to establish that it was not only incorrect but intentionally incorrect,” Orfinger said. “That is to say a lie. You (Epps’ lawyers) have not done that.”
The Halifax Health general counsel who oversaw document production included the caveat that it represented everything “to the best of my knowledge.”
Petrick dismissed that idea that the missing documents were the result of some kind of “strategic move.” She said attorneys were still in possession of the documents when they interviewed Halifax Health CEO Jeff Feasel.
“We would have to be pretty dumb if that was some sort of strategic move on our part,” Petrick said, “to withhold it on purpose for some period of time and then give it (to them) when they can still make hay out of it.”
Orfinger is still expected to make a key decision on the broader issues of the case. A hearing has not yet been set but the outcome will largely determine whether the lawsuit is weakened or if it moves forward to a trial.